Posted December 13, 2014 by in General / 12 Comments
It’s been a quiet week, despite the great temptation caused by people’s end of year lists. Like Tor’s Reviewer’s Choice, oh man. I gave myself a limit, though, and I stuck to it.
Ebooks
Daughter of Mystery and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet were from best-of lists — possibly even the Tor one I linked. Legion: Skin Deep, I actually picked up two or three weeks ago but forgot to include back then. Mea culpa.
For review
A somewhat random choice from Bookbridgr!
Library
Someone in my book group said they wouldn’t rest until I read more of Brubaker’s work, so, tahdah. I thought I’d make sure they could rest. Crow Country was a somewhat random choice between that, Badgerlands and Otter Country; I feel in the mood at the moment to read about Britain’s indigenous species.
Anyway, that’s it for me. Anyone else been getting anything exciting? Or are you saving all the excitement for Christmas?
Tags: books, Brandon Sanderson, comics, SF/F, Stacking the Shelves
Posted December 10, 2014 by in General / 4 Comments
I keep forgetting to post this lately — which is odd, since normally I love my routines. Still, I had it on my to do list for today, so fortunately, I didn’t forget!
What have you recently finished reading?
Heart’s Blood, by Juliet Marillier. Review goes up in the morning, I think; this was a reread, and I enjoyed it a lot. Though maybe not as much as I did the first time: some things were far too obvious on a reread, and I already predicted them the first time round.
What are you currently reading?
I’ve picked The Just City, by Jo Walton, back up. I stalled because I just felt like reading old familiar stuff (including Walton’s Tooth and Claw!) but I definitely want to hurry up and finish this. I’m also reading The Spirit Thief, by Rachel Aaron, which is light and fun. Comparisons to Locke Lamora and Vlad Taltos are quite unfair, given the lightness of it, though I can’t help but think of them… Non-fiction-wise, I’m also partway through Crow Country (Mark Cocker), which is kind of fascinating, not least because I didn’t know there was so much fascination to be found in the Corvid family, and also The Language Wars (Henry Hitchings), which is a little bit dry but still interesting.
What will you read next?
Probably more of the Rachel Aaron books. After that, maybe I’ll finally get round to The Girl with All the Gifts (M.R. Carey), or maybe I’ll just reread The Goblin Emperor… Or start on something else by Sarah Monette.
Tags: books, Jo Walton, Juliet Marillier, Rachel Bach/Rachel Aaron, reading meme
Posted December 9, 2014 by in General / 26 Comments
This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday is top ten new-to-me authors I read in 2014. Hmmm…
- Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette). If you haven’t noticed how I loved The Goblin Emperor, well, wow.
- Brandon Sanderson. Yep, I know, I’m way behind. But I think The Rithmatist was the first thing I’ve read by him.
- Rainbow Rowell. She can certainly write an absorbing story!
- Francis Pryor. Yes, an odd one out so far, but man, absorbing books about archaeology, how could I not love?
- Richard Fortey. Too bad I managed to read most of his books just in this one year.
- David Quammen. Purely on the basis of Spillover, without even having to think! I’m not sure about getting his book on ebola; I don’t know how much it overlaps.
- Steven Brust. Okay, technically I read a collab of his with Robin Hobb long, long ago, but this year saw my introduction to his solo work.
- Ilona Andrews. Really didn’t expect to like the Kate Daniels books so much, but I do.
- Ngaio Marsh. I need to get back to gorging on these, I think. At least there’s a lot!
- Kameron Hurley. I still haven’t read her non-fiction, but I loved her non-fiction collection.
What about you? Anything you think I’m missing from my life?
Tags: books, Ilona Andrews, Kameron Hurley, Ngaio Marsh, Rainbow Rowell, Richard Fortey, Steven Brust, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted December 6, 2014 by in General / 29 Comments
I’m doing really well and not buying books at the moment! But that doesn’t stop me going to the library (dun dun dunnn) or picking up comics. Though honestly, I picked these issues up a couple of weeks ago and forgot to include them then, so I thought I’d drop them into this post.
Review copies
I haven’t actually read anything by Kate Elliott yet, so this seems like a good place to start! As for H is for Hawk, I keep getting curious about it, but not curious enough to buy it… and then lo and behold, I get it on Netgalley. I’m quite interested to get round to reading it ASAP.
Library fiction
Rachel Aaron and Adam Christopher have actually been on my TBR for ages, but that’s in ebook form, and sometimes I’m not in the mood for that. So I thought maybe getting from the library would kickstart me. As for the others, they come recommended by various people, and Emily of New Moon by my love of Anne of Green Gables, though I gather Emily’s a bit more saccharine than Anne.
Library non-fiction
I think a friend read Ladies of the Grand Tour recently, and The Galápagos has an obvious draw for me…
Comics (single issues)
Jessica Drew is awesome.
That’s it for me, and you may well add that that’s plenty for one person. What’s anyone else been getting their hands on?
Tags: Adam Christopher, books, comics, Marvel, Rachel Bach/Rachel Aaron, SF/F, Stacking the Shelves
Posted December 4, 2014 by in General / 6 Comments
Hey folks! I’ve decided that each week, instead of uploading a whole new review on a Friday, I’m going to pick out one of my old reviews from before I had this blog, and post it up here in all its glory. This does three things: it gives me some extra content, giving me chance to spread out my new reviews more; it lets me archive some good reviews from Goodreads, which I’m steadily coming to dislike as a platform for reviewing; and it gives you the chance to see reviews of mine you may not have seen before.
I’ll start doing this from tomorrow; I promise that it’ll always be clear when it’s an old review and when it’s from, in the same way as I make it clear when I’ve received a review copy. Consider this advance warning that I can dig all the way back to 2007, and I was totally a brat at 17…
If anyone else would like to join in on this, maybe we could make a thing of it? I’m open to suggestion.
Tags: books, Flashback Friday
Posted December 2, 2014 by in General / 6 Comments
This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday is “top ten books you’re looking forward to in 2015”. Now, I actually don’t keep a very good track of this, so I might not manage the full ten, but we’ll see how I do…
- Jo Walton, The Just City. Yeah, I know I have an eARC and I’ve borrowed someone else’s ARC, but I’m still looking forward to it being out and getting to discuss it more widely.
- Maria V. Snyder, Shadow Study. More Yelena! I still need to do my reread, but these are totally my popcorn books and it’ll be nice to have more to look forward to. I might actually manage to read the Avry trilogy when I know there’s more awaiting me…
- V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic. I don’t know that much about it, but it sounds awesome, and I keep being recommended Schwab’s work.
- Joe Abercrombie, Half a World. I still need to get round to reading Half a King, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to enjoy it, and this is another in the same world.
- Catherynne M. Valente, Radiance. From reading the summary, I’m not quite sure about it, but I adore Valente’s way with words, so it’s going to be worth a try.
- Naomi Novik, Uprooted. I remember enjoying the Temeraire books, and I love reading retellings of myths/legends/folktales/fables, so this sounds right up my street.
- N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season. Gimme! Gimme!
- Marie Brennan, The Voyage of the Basilisk. I need to read the second book, but still. Still. Badass Victorian lady!
- Nicole Burstein, Othergirl. Just spotted this on someone else’s list of upcoming 2015 books. Sounds like fun, and there’s superpowers, sooo. I’m a sucker, I know.
- Brandon Sanderson, Firefight. Another one where I still need to read the previous book, but shush. Superpowers!
Oof, I managed it. What’s anyone else looking forward to?
Tags: books, Brandon Sanderson, Catherynne M. Valente, Jo Walton, Joe Abercrombie, Maria V. Snyder, Marie Brennan, N.K. Jemisin, Naomi Novik, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted November 29, 2014 by in General / 24 Comments
This week looks quite busy, but I have excuses, I promise…
Library
I’ve been meaning to pick up Bitter Greens for a while, and my sister loves Elizabeth Moon, so that’s why those two — and the non-fiction, well, they were fairly random picks from the library non-fiction section. I do love having random non-fiction to read.
Bought
This looks fairly busy, but I spent less than £5 myself — a friend from a book group bought me Native Tongue, after a discussion went pretty nasty in the group, which picked my mood up greatly. The Terrorists of Irustan was a rec that came out of that, too. And then I spotted Damaged Worlds, which contains those four books plus a short story by Cecilia Tan for under £1. So I thought I might as well give them a go.
So, not a bad haul for me, and pretty cheap too! What’s everyone else been grabbing?
Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves
Posted November 27, 2014 by in General / 17 Comments
What are you currently reading?
If Walls Could Talk (Lucy Worsley) for non-fiction, which is pretty fun for light reading.
For fiction: Fever (Mary Beth Keane), which I started reading last week, read half of, and then haven’t picked up since for no apparent reason. It’s interesting, though, because it tries to take the perspective of Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary. I keep meaning to look up some of the details to see how much of it is accurate and how much total fiction. Also The Hollow Hills (Mary Stewart), and The Just City (Jo Walton), but work seems to be coming in sufficient profusion to stop me actually finishing anything at the moment.
What have you recently finished reading?
The Eerie Silence and The Goldilocks Enigma (Paul Davies). He loses me a bit when he goes into string theory and the like, and I know that some smaller aspects are gonna be out of date since it was written before the Large Hadron Collider was up and running, but for the most part I hung in there. The Eerie Silence leaves me very sceptical about the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, but then The Goldilocks Enigma seemed more positive again… Odd, from the same author!
What will you read next?
I agreed to do a buddy read of The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison), this weekend; other than that, I’m not looking beyond the stack of half-read books at my bedside!
Tags: books, Jo Walton, Mary Stewart, reading meme
Posted November 25, 2014 by in General / 20 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is books on the winter TBR. I’m not very specific about stuff like that, and I’m dreadful at getting round to books on time, but here’s more or less what I’m planning…
- Mary Stewart, the Merlin trilogy. The first book was a reread, but with The Hollow Hills I’m breaking new ground. And enjoying it, thankfully; I still think Rosemary Sutcliff has just about everyone except maybe Steinbeck beat, but I’m enjoying Stewart’s work more than I remembered.
- Jo Walton, The Just City. I got distracted from finishing this off by family visiting, and because I can’t take it to clinic with me (I’m only allowed my ereader because it’s quite discreet!). So I’m planning to finish it… probably before the start of December, really.
- Tanya Huff, The Enchantment Emporium. Also been on the go for a while, whoops. And it’s fun!
- Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer. Because omgggg.
- Garth Nix, Clariel. Because I’m dreadful and still haven’t got round to it after I wasn’t able to read it on the Eurostar on my last trip.
- Brandon Sanderson, Steelheart. Because superheroes! And it’s about time.
- Samantha Shannon, The Bone Season. I’ve been meaning to pick this up for a while, and with the next book out soon, it seems like it’s about time.
- Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan. I’m still working on reading all his books in chronological order (by publication), so this one’s up next.
- Henry Marsh, Do No Harm. I’m starting the long road to becoming a doctor, in theory. Marsh’s topic (brain surgery) fascinates me, and I feel like I should be learning everything I can and just soaking up the knowledge in that way I have of gaining things by osmosis. (Ask my mother. I don’t know how to pronounce a lot of words because they just slipped into my vocabulary via books, without me ever hearing them. She thinks it’s funny.)
- Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King. Because there’s no better time, with a title like that, right? But also because the Mary Stewart re/read is putting me in the mood for other historically based versions of the story.
What about everyone else? Share!
Tags: Ben Aaronovitch, books, Brandon Sanderson, Garth Nix, Jo Walton, Mary Stewart, Tanya Huff, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted November 22, 2014 by in General / 10 Comments
This week has been a library week…
Fiction
I don’t think I actually ever got round to reading The Hollow Hills, so I’m looking forward to it after enjoying The Crystal Cave more than I used to. I do actually own the whole trilogy, but it’s a massive hardback, so I got the library book for reading convenience. The Savage Knight sounds interesting; I think Abaddon books probably deserve a prize for the fake manuscript-provenance story around the story, which has seemingly caught some other reviewers out. Arthuriana, yay! Tooth and Claw, The Hero and the Crown and Labyrinth are rereads of varying quality; my brain seems to need something familiar right now.
Poetry
Padel is a great-great-great granddaughter of Darwin, so this was an interesting read, even if I didn’t love it. And I liked the idea of Carol Ann Duffy’s anthology, too — modern poetry in conversation with older. I’d been meaning to grab these for a while.
Non-fiction
Not exciting in the traditional way, perhaps, but it is nice to be preparing myself…
Tags: Stacking the Shelves
